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Overview

Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with her bank account than with her son's development. Then an enigmatic young nanny introduces him to a world he never knew existed.

Product Details

About the Author

Kate Atkinson has won several prizes for her short fiction. Her first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum was chosen as the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year. Her other novels are Human Croquet and Emotionally Weird. She lives in Edinburgh.

Read an Excerpt

Not the End of the World

Little, Brown

Chapter One

I WANT," CHARLENE SAID to Trudi, "to buy my mother a birthdaypresent."

"OK," Trudi said.

"Something I can put in the post. Something that won't break."Trudi thought about some of the things you could put in the postthat might break.

A crystal decanter.

A fingernail.

An egg.

A heart.

A Crown Derby teapot.

A promise.

A mirrored-glass globe in which nothing but the sky is reflected.

"How about a scarf?" she suggested. "In velvet devore. I love thatword. Devore."

Charlene and Trudi were in a food hall as vast as a small city. Itsmelled of chocolate and ripe cheese and raw meaty bacon but most ofthe food was too expensive to buy and some of it didn't look real.They wandered along an avenue of honey.

"I could buy a jar of honey," Trudi said.

"You could," Charlene agreed.

There was plenty of honey to choose from. There was lavender honeyand rosemary honey, acacia and orange blossom and mysterious manuka.Butter-yellow honey from Tuscan sunflowers and thick, anemic honeyfrom English clover. There were huge jars like ancient amphorae andneat spinster-size pots. There were jars of cut-combhoney thatlooked like seeded amber. There was organic honey from lush SouthAmerican rain forests and there was honey squeezed from parsimoniousScottish heather on windswept moorlands. Bees the world over hadbeen bamboozled out of their bounty so that Trudi could have achoice, but she had already lost interest.

"And fountains and courtyards," Charlene said. "Fountains that runwith nectar. And courtyards full of peacocks and nightingales andlarks. And swans. And gold and silver fish swimming in thefountains. And huge blue and white marbled carp."

"I should go," Charlene said. She had failed to recover her spiritssince the mention of Arbroath. "I've got an article to write."Charlene was a journalist with a bridal magazine. "'Ten Things toConsider Before You Say "I Do."'"

"Saying 'I don't'?" Trudi suggested.

"Abracadabra," Charlene murmured to herself as she crossed againstthe traffic in the rain, "that's an exotic word." Somewhere in thedistance a bomb exploded softly.

IT HAD BEEN raining for weeks. There were no taxis outside the radiostation. Charlene was worried that she was developing a crush on theman who searched her handbag in the reception at the radio station.

"I once went out with a short man," Trudi said. "I never realizedjust how short he was until after I'd left him." There were no taxisat the rank. There were no taxis dropping anyone off at the radiostation.

Trudi frowned. "When did you last see a taxi?"

Charlene and Trudi ran from the radio station, ran from the rain,past the sandbags lining the streets, into the warm, dispassionatespace of the nearest hotel and sat in the smoky lounge and orderedtea.

"I think he's ex-military or something."

"Who?"

"The man who searches the bags at the radio station."

A waitress brought them weak green tea. They sipped their teadaintily-an adverb dictated by the awkward handles of the cups.

"I've always wanted to go out with a man in a uniform," Trudi said.

"A fireman," Charlene suggested.

"Mm," Trudi said thoughtfully.

"Or a policeman," Charlene said.

"But not a constable."

"No, not a constable," Charlene agreed. "An inspector."

"An army captain," Trudi said, "or maybe a naval helicopter pilot."

The weak green tea was bitter.

"This could be Dragon's Breath tea, for all we know," Trudi said."Do you think it is? Dragon's breath?"

There was no air in the hotel. Two large, middle-aged women wereeating scones with quiet determination. A well-known journalist wasseducing a girl who was too young. Two very old men were speaking inlow pleasant tones to each other about music and ancient wars.

"I don't want a rodent. Of any size. I want a cat. Kitty, kitty,kitty, kitty, kitty. If you say something five times you always getit."

"You made that up," Charlene said.

"True," Trudi admitted.

"I'd like something more unusual," Charlene said. "A kangaroo. Areindeer or an otter. A talking bird or a singing fish."

"A singing fish?"

"A singing fish. A fish that sings and has a magic ring in itsstomach. A huge carp that is caught in a fishpond-usually at a royalcourt somewhere-and cooked and served at the table and when you biteinto the fish you find a magic ring. And the magic ring will leadyou to the man who will love you. Or the small white mouse which isthe disguise of the man who will love you."

"That would be a rodent then."

"Failing that," Charlene continued, ignoring Trudi, "I would like acat as big as a man."

"A cat as big as a man?" Trudi frowned, trying to picture a man-sizecat.

"Yes. Imagine if men had fur."

"I think I'd rather not."

The waitress asked them if they wanted more of the weak green tea.

"For myself," the waitress said, uninvited, "I prefer dogs."Charlene and Trudi swooned with delight at the idea of dogs.

"Oh God," Trudi said, overcome by all the breeds of dog in theworld, "a German shepherd, a golden retriever, a Great Dane, aborzoi-what a great word-a Saint Bernard, a Scottie, a Westie, aYorkie. An Austrian pinscher, a Belgian griffon, a Kromfohrlander.The Glen of Imaal terrier, the Manchester, Norwich, English toy,Staffordshire, Bedlington-all terriers also. The Kai, the PodengoPortugueso Medio, the Porcelaine and the Spanish greyhound. Thebloodhound, the lurcher, the Dunker, the Catahoula Leopard Dog, theHungarian vizsla, the Lancashire heeler and the giant German spitz!"

"Or a mongrel called Buster or Spike," Charlene said.

The waitress cleared away their tea things. "Money, money, money,money, money," she whispered to herself as she bumped open the doorto the kitchen with her hip. The electricity failed and everyone wassuddenly very quiet. No one had realized how dark the rain had madethe afternoon.

IN THE RECEPTION at the television station there was a tank of fishso big that it covered a whole wall. Trudi noted that they weremostly African freshwater fish. She wondered if they had flown herein a plane and if that had felt strange for them. No one else wastaking any notice of the wall of fish. The receptionist hadstrawberry-blond hair, coiffed extravagantly. She appeared to have aHeckler and Koch MP5A3 9mm submachine gun under her desk. Trudi felta wave of jealousy.

Trudi was a publicist for a small imprint in a large publishinghouse. She had a twin sister called Heidi and neither Trudi norHeidi liked her name. They were the names (in the opinion of Heidiand Trudi) of goatherding girls and American hookers, of girls whowore their hair in plaits and drank milk or had sex dressed asFrench maids and nurses. Of girls who never grew up. Trudi and Heidihad no idea why they were so called. Their parents had died in abizarre accident not long after they were born and the kindstrangers who stood in for them, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, had noinsight into their dead parents' thoughts.

CHARLENE AND TRUDI ordered gin slings and picked at a small dish ofblack olives that tasted more bitter than weak green tea.

There were boisterous men in suits perched at the bar. They werewondering how drunk they could get in the precurfew swill.

"I need a new haircut," Charlene said.

"I need new hair," Trudi said.

"And thinner ankles," Charlene said.

"And bigger breasts," Trudi said. "Or maybe I want smaller breasts."

"Your breasts are perfect."

"Thank you."

They could smell the perfume of the women sitting at the adjacenttable, peppery and spicy with a top note of deodorant. The womenwere dressed in very fashionable, very ugly clothes. People staredat them because their clothes were so fashionable and so ugly. Theysmoked incessantly and drank martinis. There was an oily film on topof their drinks. They looked like high-class whores but they wererock stars' ex-wives.

A waiter dropped a tray of glasses. The boisterous men in suitsdangled their cigarettes from their mouths while they applauded.

"And," Trudi said, "I would like to ride on a horse-drawn sleighthrough forests in the snow with dogs-borzois-running alongside andI want to be wearing silks and velvets and a cloak lined with thefur of Arctic foxes and bears and wolfkins -"

"You mean wolf skins?"

"No, wolfkins-they're very rare-but only ones that have died ofnatural causes, not ones that have been killed for their fur."

"Of course not."

"And diamonds, old rose-cut diamonds like dark, melting ice, at mythroat and ears, and on my fingers, rubies and opals like larks'eggs, and on my feet red leather seven-league boots -"

"Flat or with a heel?"

"A modest heel. And I want to drink a liqueur made from ripe purpleplums from a silver hip flask and -" One of the boisterous men insuits fell off his bar stool. The barman pronounced his time ofdeath as 9:42 P.M.

"Time to go home, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "time to go home."

Later, Charlene wished she had asked Trudi what a wolfkin was.

CHARLENE WORRIED THAT she would never have a baby. A baby would loveher. A baby would exactly fit the round hollow space inside her.That might be a problem when it grew, of course. "Baby, baby, baby,baby, baby," she said to the mirror before she went to bed.

First, of course, she had to get someone to father the baby andafter the humiliating ordeal with the dead solicitor last year shecouldn't imagine ever having sex again. This worried her less thanshe would have imagined. Before. And Charlene would call the babySmiler. A boy. As fat as a porker, as big as a bomb.

In the hours between curfew and dawn Charlene listened to the sirenswailing through the night and planned an article on "Great Tips forSpring Weddings." She fell asleep with her hand on the Sig Sauersemiautomatic she kept under her pillow and didn't wake untilEosphorus, the morning star, rose and heralded the coming of hismother, Eos, the dawn.

TRUDI WAS LOOKING for black trousers. Something simple by Joseph orperhaps Nicole Farhi. Charlene took trousers from the racks in thedepartment store and displayed them with a sales assistant'sflourish for Trudi to view. All the genuine sales assistants seemedto have disappeared. Trudi didn't like any of the trousers Charleneshowed her.

"Perhaps you could take the trousers from an Armani suit and leavethe jacket?" Charlene suggested. "Or MaxMara-they have a lot ofblack suits this season. Well cut. I think I'm quite good at this,don't you? Perhaps I could do this for a living."

Trudi tried on a Moschino dress and a Prada jacket and a Kenzocardigan and a Gucci skirt but all the clothes were made for tiny,whippet-thin Japanese girls.

"I'll never go to the ball," Trudi said sadly.

"The balls were all canceled long ago, as you well know," Charlenesaid briskly. "Try this Betty Jackson wrap."

In the end, Trudi decided to buy a rhinestone belt but there were nosales assistants to buy it from and unlike nearly everyone else inthe city she wasn't a thief.

"We should make clothes," Charlene said as they passed through thehaberdashery floor of the department store.

"What a wonderful word," Trudi said.

"What a wonderful world?" Charlene said doubtfully.

"No. Word. Haberdashery."

"We could buy a sewing machine and share it," Charlene said. "Wecould buy cloth and spools of thread and paper patterns and spendpleasant winter evenings dressmaking together. Perhaps by the softlight from beautiful glass oil lamps. We could sit in a pool ofgolden light from the beautiful glass oil lamps and our silverneedles would glimmer and flash as we bowed our heads to the simpleyet honest work."

But Trudi was looking at the bolts of cloth, shelf after shelf ofevery different kind of fabric. "Goodness," she said, "this is veryimpressive. Broadcloth and butter muslin, brocade, brocatelle,buckram, bunting, and Botany wool. Bombazine and boucle, burlap andBedford cord, barege, bobbinet, balbriggan, and barathea! And that'sjust the Bs. Then, there's cambric and calico and cavalry twill -"

The tannoy started up with a sudden howl of feedback and adisembodied voice announced that it was looking for Mr. Scarlet."Would Mr. Scarlet please come to Haberdashery, Mr. Scarlet toHaberdashery, please."

Charlene started to panic. "You know what that means, don't you?"she said to Trudi.

Editorial Reviews

Atkinson, who began her career with Behind the Scenes at the Museum, a Whitbread Book of the Year, and enjoyed good reviews for two more novels, now gathers together this suite of comparatively loosely connected stories. Atkinson's work has grown increasingly diffuse; her most recent book, Emotionally Weird, was printed in three fonts, representing separate strings of narrative. This collection takes that conceit without the typesetting extravagance one step further, opening and closing on two women who seem to tell one another the intervening tales. Atkinson's Scheherazades, singletons of indeterminate age named Charlene and Trudi, appear first in "a food hall as vast as a small city," and by the book's end which may or may not be the end of the world they're starving to death in a squalid, freezing flat in what feels like an apocalyptic present. In the women's restless imaginations, readers meet more than one girlfriend (in different stories, and each unbeknownst to the other) of a man named Hawk; a gaggle of perfect-toothed American Zane sisters; and a governess who may or may not be a goddess. Some of Atkinson's devices a giant cat who impregnates a woman with kittens, an evil twin who gets to have all the fun make for stories as simple as fables, but some, like the nanny goddess and the virtuoso, multiple-voiced "Dissonance," are sharp and memorable, full of astutely observed family dynamics. While not as intense or as unified as Atkinson's full-length work, this is a sharp and wholly original collection. (Dec. 3) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The characters in most of these stories are as bleak and staid as Atkinson's portrayal of the Scottish landscape. The women in particular seem to emerge out of nowhere and end up not much further along, though listeners will still find themselves briefly caught up in their lives. As the tales, read by Geraldine James, mount one on another, there is slight movement toward death or abandonment, often under unusual (and somewhat contrived) circumstances, as if these lives were doomed from the start. Characters reappear briefly and unexpectedly in other stories though not with enough regularity to make interconnected lives central to the collection's structure. While the writing is excellent, and one has to admire the author's ability to build on so very little, if you're not paying attention you could suddenly find yourself in the middle of another story. Atkinson's debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the prestigious Whitbread Award, so she should have a loyal following in America as well as Great Britain.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with Soho Weekly News, New York Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Twelve debut stories from Whitbread winner Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum, 1996) are unparalleled in deftness but in their depth less compelling. Characters from one tale are sometimes referred to in another-as with Meredith Zane, whose aunt Nanci Zane married a Briton (in the 1970s) and then died during dentistry ("The Bodies Vest"), causing her own dentist father, back in California, to shoot himself. Earlier in the volume but later in time, Meredith ("Transparent Fiction") is 25 and living with a wannabe scriptwriter in London. When Meredith twitches the cape from the shoulders of a famous producer's wife, the aging lady turns to dust. Ovid-like metamorphoses appeal to Atkinson, who prefaces the stories with Latin passages, even Greek, allusions that tend to make the stories seem the more minor. A prolixity of cuteness and verve can give energy but can also cloy ("Meredith, Baxter, and Wilson-which sounded like a firm of lawyers-were all girls, as were the endlessly confusing Taylor, Tyler, Skyler, and Sky"). The pieces are nothing, though, if not capable in their details, as in "Tunnel of Fish," about a young deaf boy's fantasies, or "Unseen Translation," about a likably strident nanny who seeks to rescue her charges from the "ordinary." More familiar still is "Temporal Anomaly," about an Edinburgh woman who hovers, watching her family's reactions after she "dies" in a car wreck. In "Wedding Favors," a divorced mother is alone after her last child leaves for college, while in "The Cat Lover," a woman's pet grows huge and she gets pregnant by him. Opening and closing the volume are twin stories, the first about futuristic threats to the world ("Charlene and Trudi GoShopping"), the other ("Pleasureland") about its end. In both, the characters rattle off lists of things to do, eat, and buy in another Ovid-like device that, here, just seems minimizing and affected. Stories, on balance, that appear above all to love the sound of their own voices.

Kirkus Reviews

Moving and funny and crammed with incidental wisdom.”  Sunday Times

"Exceptional... Sharp, witty and completely compelling." Daily Mail

"I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect... left me so fizzing with admiration." Observer

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This collection of short stories is unlike any set of stories I have read. With the exception of the first and last stories, every story starts out 'normal' enough, with contemporary characters in London and Edinburgh struggling with real life issues. But then comes the mythic turn in each story, which for me always came as a delight. I found I could not put down the book after I read the first story. I knew I had stumbled onto something special. I realized as I read through the stories that they are more connected than one would think at first, so I recommend reading them in the order they are in the book. I also realized that I needed to review my familiarity with Greek myths. So I pulled out my old childhood collection of Greek myths and reread the myths of the Greek gods and goddesses and various humans who interact with the gods. After my mythology review I reread the stories and enjoyed even more the wonder of the author's writing. She seamlessly melds the ordinary with the extraordinary (the myths). While I became intrigued with the 'game' of figuring which mythic characters were being represented, the fact is, the stories stand as remarkable and enjoyable without a detailed analysis. My favorite television series of all time is 'Northern Exposure.' One of the things I loved about NE was that the stories could take unexpected magical twists. And, as in the case of Atkinson's stories, the twists are not gratuitous-- they enrich the meaning of the character's struggles and relationships. I have read the collection four times now. After having gotten over the novelty of Atkinson's marvelous style and the mythical connections, I now appreciate her depth of insight into human relationships. I moved from being amazed by these stories, to being enamored, intrigued, and, finally, to being truly moved.

cloggiedownunder

More than 1 year ago

Not The End Of The World is a book of twelve short stories by British author, Kate Atkinson. The stories capture (mostly) ordinary people in their everyday lives, with occasional snapshots of extraordinary moments. Each of the stories can be read as a stand-alone, but they have connections: characters appear in each other&rsquo;s tales, with some characters making multiple appearances; places (Edinburgh, Crete), events (a fatal vehicle accident on the M9), TV programs (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Green Acres, Star Trek: Voyager), animals (a man-sized cat), magazine articles (Ten Things To Consider Before You Say I Do) and items (wedding favours) all recur.
Two stories feature Charlene and Trudi in a world where there has been some sort of societal breakdown, and these bookend the rest of the stories. The first story is a little strange, but readers who persist will be rewarded with some tales of the outstanding calibre to which fans of Atkinson&rsquo;s work are accustomed; the last story has a clever twist that reflects back onto the preceding ten stories.
Atkinson has an exceptional talent for portraying people, and her descriptive prose is a joy to read: &ldquo;She swung open the wrought-iron gate and walked briskly up the path, her heels striking like flints off the slabs of York stone&rdquo;. The observations of young boys are particularly well voiced: &ldquo;Addison had once heard a neighbour refer to his mother as &lsquo;highly strung&rsquo; and although he had no idea what that meant he knew it sounded like an uncomfortable thing to be&rdquo; and &ldquo;&rsquo;Georgie was &hellip; flighty,&rsquo; Mrs Anderson said, searching for an enigmatic word, so that Vincent imagined his mother as a ball of feathers wafted on a kindly wind&rdquo; illustrate this. Another brilliant Atkinson offering. 4.5 stars

jbrubacher on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

Short stories based in London and Edinburgh, about human beings and their worries and wonders, a few mothers, a Goddess or two and a ghost, with recurring themes: cats, Buffy the vampire slayer, and it being the end of the world (or not.) These stories are strange and entertaining.

isabelx on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

'And', Trudi said, 'I would like to ride on a horse-drawn sleigh through forests in the snow with dogs - Borzois - running alongside and I want to be wearing silks and velvets and a cloak lined with the fur of Arctic foxes and bears and wolfkins-' 'You mean wolf skins?' 'No, wolfkins - they're very rare - but only ones that have died of natural causes, not ones that have been killed for their fur.' 'Of course not.'I was taken by this book from the very first story "Charlene and Trudi go Shopping", in which two young women try to keep up some semblance of normal life in a war-torn city, and take refuge in sharing their fantasies as they shop, drink gin slings and dodge snipers' bullets.In these stories, the world of the old Gods is very close to the surface and the characters aren't always surprised when it breaks through. What I especially liked was the way that the links between the stories were very subtle at first, becoming more noticeable in later stories.

riverwillow on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

A fantastic collection of subtly interconnected stories. Atkinson superbly blends the seemingly real with the seeingly unreal and interweaves mythology and pop culture in each story - wonderful and a 'must read' for any fan of her novels.

carmarie on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

I really enjoy Kate Atkinson. The way she writes has so much lightness and ease to it, it's great. I read a review of this book from a critic who said that her characters "just like to hear themselves talk and talk" and yes, I agree..but I also love that! She's a unique writer. These short stories entertwine (not all), but in the end, it's all wrapped up in a pretty package.

JolleyG on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

Kate Atkinson is an excellent writer, and this is an excellent collection of short stories. The stories are slightly interconnected with each other by a certain cast of characters, and this adds a multidimensional feel to each of them, a sense of many lives being carried out in alternate universes.Up to this point I have only read one other book by Kate Atkinson: the first book in her Jackson Brodie detective series ("Case Histories"). So I was surprised at how different these short stories are, how inventive and imaginative and witty. Next on my list is her "Emotionally Weird."

librarianbryan on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

When your book club starts talking about things the author should have done, you the know the book is in trouble. I'll give it three stars because I'm sympathetic to the things Atkinson was going for. One of those things is TV as contemporary mythology. Atkinson is focused on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in particular. Half the group was indifferent to Joss Whedon and other half thought he was America's Shakespeare. Just like some people in Jesus and other do not.I'm doing it all for Pan. And Battlestar Galactica.

I love these tangentially connected, super smart stories. They have piles of pop culture and literary references. They are better than an episode of The Gilmore Girls (and that's saying a lot).

TigerLMS on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

This novel is a series of what appear to be unrelated short stories, yet occassionally similar characters come back in later stories, leaving the reader to wonder if Atkinson is leading you toward something larger. Some of the stories involve mythological ties, others appear on the surface to be simple stories of familial angst and longing. It is not until the last paragraph of the last story of the book when Atkinson ties everything together in a ghastly, 'didn't see that coming' twist. I rarely re-read novels; this is one I certainly will come back to and read again.

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